“I needed to tell you something. In person. And it’s not good. Freya told me you’d called asking if we’d put Anna’s record collection away for safekeeping. We didn’t. I did some checking and… um… it’s been taken.”
Her eyes narrowed. “By whom?” But she already knew.
“Lena. She showed up after Anna’s stroke, but I sent her away. Instead she went to Anna’s house and took the records and other valuables. I found some of them on eBay. The seller on eBay believed he’d bought them legitimately from Lena. I’m sorry.”
Sophie let out a slow breath, her heart pounding in her head. “Is there more?”
“Yes. When I found out about the missing records, I talked to Anna’s lawyer. She had a lot of money tied up in bonds that I knew nothing about. If she’d died, her lawyer would have told us. As it was…” He took a breath. “The lawyer checked the serial numbers on the bonds. They’ve been cashed. I’m so sorry, Sophie. A good part of what would have been your inheritance-yours and Freya’s-is gone.”
Sophie nodded, numb. “Thanks for telling me in person. I have to work now.”
Harry frowned. “We have to call the police and press charges.”
She swung the ax on her shoulder with too much force. “You do it. If I press charges, I might have to see her. I’d really rather never see her again.”
“Sophie, wait.” Harry had noticed Officer Lyons. “Why is there a cop in your lobby?”
“He’s here for security.” It was a half-truth more than a half-lie. “Harry, I have a tour group waiting for me in the Hall. I have to go. Do what you want with Lena. I don’t care.”
Friday, January 19, 5:00
P.M.
Vito dropped into his chair at the conference room table and rubbed the back of his neck, tired and frustrated. “Fuck.” Three hours of interviewing Jager Van Zandt had at times brought new insights but ultimately hadn’t yielded the real information they sought.
Liz sat down next to him. “Van Zandt really might not know where Simon is, Vito.”
“You could try torturing it out of him,” Jen muttered, then shrugged when Liz raised her brows. “It was just a thought.”
“Damn good thought,” Katherine said, and by the looks on the faces around the table, a thought everyone else shared.
Gathered for the evening debrief, Nick and Jen, Katherine and Thomas, and Liz and Brent all wore grim expressions. They’d been joined by a new face-ADA Magdalena Lopez who, along with Thomas and Liz, had observed the interrogation of Van Zandt. Maggy was a delicate woman with dark brown eyes that now narrowed as she spoke.
“He might know and he might not. But I’m not prepared to give him anything more than I have, particularly not full immunity.”
Maggy had offered to reduce his murder charge to manslaughter if he told them where to find Frasier Lewis, aka Simon, but Van Zandt had demanded full immunity, the arrogant little bastard. “We don’t want you to give him immunity, Maggy,” Vito said. “He might not have killed anyone, but he was sure as hell prepared to profit from it.”
“Besides,” Nick said, “if Simon had believed Van Zandt really knew anything useful, he wouldn’t have handed him over to us. You did okay, Maggy.” The last was added with a grudging admiration, probably, Vito thought, because of the guilty verdict Maggy had gotten on Nick’s Siever case. Now Nick could finally feel like he deserved the Christmas cards the Siever girl’s parents sent every year.
“He did give us Simon’s cell phone number,” Vito said.
“Same number he used to call me,” Liz said. “No GPS. Untraceable.”
“I found Van Zandt’s reaction to knowing real people died to make his game to be the most telling,” Thomas mused. “‘You must prune dead wood to save the tree,’” he mimicked in Van Zandt’s thick accent. “‘Sometimes you cut living wood.’”
“Ultimate break-the-eggs-to-make-the-omelet approach,” Nick agreed. “Slimy SOB.”
“Sophie told us that the big R in oRo was Dutch for wealth,” Vito said. “I guess Van Zandt’s never made a secret that he’s in it for the money.”
Thomas shook his head. “Van Zandt could be an even worse sociopath than Simon Vartanian. At least Simon’s doing this for art.”
“Van Zandt claimed he hadn’t paid Simon yet,” Vito told Katherine, Brent, and Jen. “Simon’s pay was based on royalties, which wouldn’t be paid for another three months.”
“And the royalties are piddly shit,” Nick added. “Simon didn’t do this for money.”
“How did Simon hook up with Van Zandt?” Jen asked.
“Van Zandt was in a bar near his apartment in SoHo,” Vito answered. He shook his head. “The bar is right down the street from the park where Susannah Vartanian walks her dog. We think Simon met up with Van Zandt one of the times he was stalking Susannah. Anyway, Simon approached Van Zandt in the bar a year ago, bought him a few drinks, and showed him a demo disk.”
“It was the Clothilde strangulation scene,” Nick said. “But it was done in a modern-day setting. Van Zandt saw ‘promise’ and told Simon if he converted it to a World War II theme, he’d get it in his next game. Simon did and Van Zandt asked for more. Simon did the scenes with the Luger and the grenade. It’s all Van Zandt had time to put in Behind Enemy Lines because he was up against the delivery deadline.”
“Derek protested,” Thomas said and frowned. “‘Because he was weak.’”
Maggy Lopez sighed. “Van Zandt’s quite a guy.”
“And I hope he rots in hell,” Nick said. “But bottom line, Van Zandt says he doesn’t know where Lewis came from or where he lived, or who the boy with the grenade was.”
“Well, I got some info on Frasier Lewis,” Katherine said. “The real Frasier Lewis.”
Vito blinked, surprised. “He really exists?”
“Oh, yes. He’s a forty-year-old farmer in Iowa. Simon’s been using his medical insurance for some time. The real Frasier’s medical insurance has a lifetime cap of a million dollars. If he ever got really sick, he’d be in trouble, because a lot of that money is gone. I wondered how Simon afforded the fancy prosthetics Dr. Pfeiffer’s file said he used. He paid for his own medical care through medical insurance fraud.”
“Does the real Frasier Lewis have two legs?” Nick asked.
“Yes,” Katherine said.
Nick was frowning. “Wouldn’t Pfeiffer have seen that there was no amputation?”
“Not necessarily,” Brent said thoughtfully. “Simon is good with computers. We already thought he could get into people’s financials. What if he could get into a medical-records database, too? What if that’s why he picked Lewis’s medical identity to steal? Because he had access to Lewis’s medical history to change it? It’s just a thought.”
“It’s a good thought. Run with it,” Vito said. “See what you come up with.”
“I’m glad I could offer something, because I didn’t get anything off Daniel’s father’s PC. At least nothing to lead you to Simon directly. There was a utility downloaded-it allowed whoever put it on there to access the father’s computer remotely, but it was nothing fancy. Just a common UNIX utility that anyone could have downloaded.”
“You sound disappointed,” Nick said and Brent chuckled.
“Maybe a little. I was expecting something huge based on the Trojan ’bots with timers he used on the models’ computers. But this was simple and elegant. And untraceable. Maybe I’ll have more luck with the medical databases. They tend not to be so elegant. Oh.” Brent handed Vito a framed photo. “The Dutton sheriff that sent the computer sent this. He said Daniel and Susannah had asked him to give it to us.”
“It’s Simon,” Vito said. “Younger. This is the same face as the one in Pfeiffer’s picture. I guess even Simon found it difficult to disguise himself in anything more than a wig at a doctor’s exam. It’s one more piece of the puzzle.”